Category: Nutrition

Farmers make a lot of decisions. One of the most important is how much fertilizer to apply to their crops, and when to apply it. Applying more than necessary or at the wrong time can waste resources, impact the environment, and cut into narrow profits. The answer could lie in a small handheld device. A…

Important work happening in the Capital Region is transforming the future of vegetables. Inside the Seed Biotechnology Center at UC Davis, Dr. Allen Van Deynze points out the progress of the genome sequencing of Moringa oleifera — a colorful stream of data points shows on his computer screen. The moringa tree is an important source…

Bambara groundnut. Drumstick tree. Apple-ring tree. While many have never heard of these crops, they produce nutrition essential in Africa. To help improve the benefit brought by these and other little-studied crops, Dow AgroSciences teamed up with the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) and the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC). The organization is working…

The UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy and the African Orphan Crops Consortium work to improve orphan crop quality and nutritional value The innovative, partnering work of the African Plant Breeding Academy (based in the Seed Biotechnology Center, Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis) and the African Orphan Crops Consortium (based at the World…

The bioinformatics company Illumina has donated a $1 million state-of the-art DNA sequencer to a global plant-breeding effort to fight malnutrition and poverty in Africa by improving the continent’s traditional crops. The UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy is partnering with the African Orphan Crop Consortium, which is working to map and make public the genomes…

Plant scientists and wheat breeders now have a new tool to develop more nutritious and productive wheat varieties: A public online database of 10 million mutations in wheat genes. Scientists at UC Davis and three institutions in the UK created the database, which will allow scientists worldwide to study the function of every gene of…

The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research has selected Amélie Gaudin, assistant professor of agroecology, as one of the nine inaugural recipients of the New Innovator in Food and Agriculture Award. They will receive a total of $4.8 million in research support over five years. Established by the U.S. Farm Bill of 2014, the nonprofit…

The standard time to apply nitrogen on wheat is pre-plant, but new research from UC Cooperative Extension researchers Steve Orloff, Mark Lundy, Steve Wright and Bob Hutmacher has found evidence supporting different timing. Working on the third year of the study, they’ve looked at different N application rates and timings. They are also looking at…

UC Davis is partnering in a global plant-breeding consortium fighting malnutrition and poverty in Africa by improving the continent’s traditional crops. The African Orphan Crop Consortium — conceived by Howard Shapiro, a senior fellow at UC Davis and the chief agricultural officer at Mars Inc. — is making great strides in its ambitious attempt to…

By Julia Ann Easley, July 18, 2016 As the summer sun warmed her, student Hanna Morris stood up and surveyed row upon row of vegetables ripe for harvest near the UC Davis Student Farm. The spring plant sciences course on plant growth and care had ended, and this two-acre lab had been largely abandoned by…